Asked by: Dan Norris (Independent - North East Somerset and Hanham)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if he will make an assessment of the dimensions of cages necessary for the breeding and rearing of game birds that is adequate to avoid stress.
Answered by Daniel Zeichner - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Defra’s Code of Practice for the Welfare of Gamebirds Reared for Sporting Purposes provides keepers with guidance on how to meet the welfare needs of gamebirds, including providing appropriate space and facilities to ensure the avoidance of stress. The code recommends that barren cages for breeding pheasants and small barren cages for breeding partridges should not be used, and that any system should be appropriately enriched. The Animal Welfare Act 2006 places a duty on keepers to ensure that the needs of an animal are met to the extent required by good practice.
Asked by: Dan Norris (Independent - North East Somerset and Hanham)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, when he plans to publish statutory fly-tipping enforcement guidance for local authorities.
Answered by Mary Creagh - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Government is seeking powers in the Crime and Policing Bill to provide statutory fly-tipping enforcement guidance. Following Royal Assent, we will carry out a consultation with relevant stakeholders including local authorities. Once the consultation has concluded and responses taken into account, we will look to publish the guidance as soon as is practical.
Asked by: Dan Norris (Independent - North East Somerset and Hanham)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, when he plans to next review the regulations for end-of-life vehicles.
Answered by Mary Creagh - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
This Government is committed to transitioning to a circular economy. The forthcoming Circular Economy Strategy will be supported by a series of roadmaps detailing the interventions that the Government will make on a sector-by-sector basis, supporting government’s Missions to kickstart economic growth and make Britain a clean energy superpower. As we develop our strategy, evidence for sector-specific interventions right across the economy—including for transport—is being considered. This consideration encompasses international best practices and regulations in other jurisdictions, including the EU.
Asked by: Dan Norris (Independent - North East Somerset and Hanham)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps her Department is taking to reduce the waiting time for driving tests at the Bristol (Kingswood) centre.
Answered by Lilian Greenwood - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
The Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency’s (DVSA) main priority is upholding road safety standards while it works hard to reduce car practical driving test waiting times.
On the 23 April, the Secretary of State for Transport appeared before the Transport Select Committee and announced that DVSA will take further actions to reduce waiting times for all customers across Great Britain.
Further information on these actions and progress of DVSA’s plan to reduce driving test waiting times, which was announced in December 2024, can be found on GOV.UK.
On 15 July, DVSA launched a new recruitment campaign for the Bristol area. DVSA is looking to recruit two additional driving examiners (DE) at Kingwood, up to 10 additional DEs in Avonmouth and two additional DEs in Weston-Super-Mare.
Further vacancies in other sites in the surrounding area such as Taunton and Chippenham, will also be advertised in DVSA’s following recruitment campaigns shortly.
Asked by: Dan Norris (Independent - North East Somerset and Hanham)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what the average waiting time was for a driving test at Bristol Kingswood centre on 1 June 2025.
Answered by Lilian Greenwood - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
The average waiting time in weeks for a car practical driving test at Bristol Kingswood driving test centre, for June 2025, was 21.6 weeks.
Asked by: Dan Norris (Independent - North East Somerset and Hanham)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, how many small e-commerce packages passed through customs in the UK from China in 2024.
Answered by James Murray - Exchequer Secretary (HM Treasury)
Consignments imported into the UK that are valued at £135 or less are not subject to customs duty and are predominantly imported through a simplified customs declaration. As part of this, multiple goods can be bulk declared without providing the total number of consignments. Therefore, HMRC does not routinely collect customs data on the number of imports from China that are worth less than £135.
Asked by: Dan Norris (Independent - North East Somerset and Hanham)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent progress her Department has made in ensuring that job centres improve the support available to (a) people looking for work and (b) employers seeking to recruit staff.
Answered by Alison McGovern - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
As we set out in the Get Britain Working White Paper, we are reforming Jobcentre Plus and creating a new service across Great Britain that will enable everyone to access support to find good, meaningful work, and support to help them to progress in work, including through an enhanced focus on skills and careers. The new service will be for anyone who wants to look for work, wants help to increase their earnings, or who wants help to change their career or re-train.
We are taking a test and learn approach to develop the new service. In our initial Pathfinder based in Wakefield, we are testing our new Get Britain Working Coaching Academy. This Academy will further train our Jobcentre colleagues to support individuals in achieving their employment aspirations. We are also testing changes to the claimant commitment appointments, to explore how we can focus work coach conversations on more personalised and tailored employment support based on their individual needs and move away from a one size fits all approach.
The new service must also work for employers. Our vision is for a service that all employers want to engage with, as they know it is a place where they can find high-quality, highly motivated future employees.
As part of our commitment to enhance our employer offer, we have set up a dedicated recruitment team to provide recruitment support and single account management. We have boosted the number of Sector-based Work Academy Programme’s from 80k to 100k in 25/26 across a range of priority and high vacancy sectors. For example, we are working with UKHospitality to launch a hospitality SWAPs pilot in 26 areas in need of jobs and opportunity, including 13 coastal towns such as Scarborough and Blackpool. We are committed to working across Government and with industries such as construction, health and social care and clean energy to help address workforce shortages.
We will continue to work with employers as we design the new Jobs and Careers Service to ensure we design a service that can better support employers to meet their recruitment needs.
Asked by: Dan Norris (Independent - North East Somerset and Hanham)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps she is taking to help tackle child poverty in North East Somerset and Hanham constituency.
Answered by Alison McGovern - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Tackling child poverty is at the heart of the Government’s mission to break down barriers to opportunity and improve the life chances of every child. It is unacceptable that there are almost 2500 children in relative poverty (before housing costs) in North East Somerset and Hanham. Children in low-income families' local area statistics (CiLIF) are published on Stat-Xplore. The Child Poverty Taskforce is progressing work to publish the Child Poverty Strategy in autumn that will deliver fully funded measures to tackle the structural and root causes of child poverty.
The Strategy will look at levers across four key themes of increasing incomes, reducing essential costs, increasing financial resilience; and better local support especially in the early years. This will build on the reform plans underway across government and work underway in Devolved Governments.
As a significant downpayment ahead of Strategy publication, we have already taken substantive action across major drivers of child poverty through Spending Review 2025. This includes an expansion of Free School Meals that will lift 100,000 children out of poverty by the end of the parliament. Our data shows that 3,500 children in the North East Somerset and Hanham constituency will be eligible for FSM from September 2026. This data can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/free-school-meals-expansion-impact-on-poverty-levels. We are also establishing a long-term Crisis and Resilience Fund supported by £1 billion a year (including Barnett impact), investing in local family support services, and extending the £3 bus fare cap. We also announced the biggest boost to social and affordable housing investment in a generation and £13.2 billion including Barnett impact across the Parliament for the Warm Homes Plan.
Our commitments at the 2025 Spending Review come on top of the existing action we have taken which includes expanding free breakfast clubs, capping the number of branded school uniform items children are expected to wear, increasing the national minimum wage for those on the lowest incomes and supporting 700,000 of the poorest families by introducing a Fair Repayment Rate on Universal Credit deductions.
Asked by: Dan Norris (Independent - North East Somerset and Hanham)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of the provision of 30-hours of free childcare on the finances of families in North East Somerset and Hanham constituency.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
On 7 July, the department published our ‘Best Start in life Strategy’, which sets out how we will make real change happen for families across the country.
From September 2025, eligible working parents will be able to access 30 hours of funded childcare a week, over 38 weeks of the year, from the term after their child turns nine months until they start school. This will save eligible families using all 30 hours nationally up to £7,500 on average.
According to the ‘Childcare and early years provider survey’, this would be higher (£7,900) in Bath and North East Somerset due to higher childcare fees, though these estimates are likely to be more variable due to a smaller sample size. The survey can be accessed here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/data-tables/permalink/8919d3d0-fd4f-4adb-8ae2-08ddbed6edd3. To calculate this estimation the department has used local authority data from Bath and North East Somerset in the absence of constituency-level childcare fee data.
A recent Coram report shows the average cost to parents of a 25 hour nursery place for children under three in England has halved between 2024 and 2025.
Asked by: Dan Norris (Independent - North East Somerset and Hanham)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps his Department is taking to help tackle high levels of sewage entering waterways.
Answered by Emma Hardy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
For too long, water companies have discharged unacceptable levels of sewage into our rivers, lakes and seas.
That is why we are placing water companies under special measures through our landmark Water (Special Measures) Act. The Act will drive meaningful improvements in the performance and culture of the water industry as a first important step in enabling wider, transformative change across the water sector.
The Independent Water Commission, led by Sir Jon Cunliffe, will make recommendations to shape further action to transform how our water system works and clean up our waterways for good. The IWC will submit its final report later in summer 2025 with recommendations on how to reset the sector for the future.
As part of Price Review 2024 (PR24), which runs from 2025–2030, water companies will be delivering record of over £11 billion of investment to improve nearly 3,000 storm overflows across England and Wales. This investment will be targeted at those affecting the most sensitive sites for ecological and human health.